November 2004
THINGS TO KEEP YOU UP AT NIGHT
A Tangled Mess
I have a nice long orange extension cord that I use when I'm doing yard work. I have one outside electrical outlet, so I went with the extra long extension cord. It lets me cut hedges, eat weeds and use my electric blower wherever in the yard is necessary. I'm a neat person, so I always put all my tools away. And, I always take the extension cord and wrap it up neatly. I take the plug end and grab it between my thumb and first finger, bend my arm up at the elbow, and then guide the cord around my elbow, through my thumb and first finger, over and over again until the cord is in tidy coils. I then place it carefully on a shelf in the garage until I need again.
Now it's the next time. I grab the extension cord and invariably find that it is kinked and twisted and knotted. How can this happen? How can something put away so neatly end up causing me to curse and stamp my feet? I've thought about it for a long time and here's what I think happens. Little green men come and night... No, that's not it. Here's what I think is really going on.
When the cord is neatly coiled, I consider it to be in its natural state - the state of order. But whose order? Upon reflection I've determined that there is no one state of order for an extension cord. It can and does find itself in all kinds of states. It may be knotted, twisted, braided, bent, or coiled in one direction and then the next. To the extension cord, an inanimate object, there is no one way that it likes to be. Only I have come up with one way that I want it to be when I find it for its next use.
What happens while it is being stored is the key to the disorder. It has its own memory of twists and bends from prior uses, and indeed from its manufacture. It seeks those twists and bends as soon as I put it down. My son comes out and tosses his baseball glove up on the shelf, it jostles the cord, more disorder. My wife gives it a push to clear some space for some canning jars, and bang, it strays from that nice coiled pile that I like.
Can you see how this applies to the world around us? In so many ways, so many things are like my extension cord. We appreciate the quality of order, and that order has a very narrow bandwidth. In other words, it's my way or the highway. But nature is content to express itself in hundreds, thousands or millions of ways. Apply this to the formation of crystals, the growth of a tree or the revolution of the Earth around the Sun. Perhaps this is not the most scientific explanation, but it bears thinking about as we impose our idea of how things should be on the natural and physical worlds.
Some Books To Keep You Up
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Galileo's Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom
by Peter William Huber
List Price: $16.50
Our Price: $13.20
Paperback - 288 pages Reprint edition (February 1993)
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The Triumph of Evolution...And the Failure of Creationism
by Niles Eldredge
List Price: $24.95
Our Price: $17.47
Hardcover - 224 pages (May 2000)
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Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
by Michael J. Behe
List Price: $25.00
Our Price: $17.50
Hardcover - 307 pages (August 1996) |
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Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets: The Search for the Million Megaton Menace That Threatens Life on Earth
by Duncan Steel, Arthur Charles Clarke (Foreword)
List Price: $16.95
Our Price: $13.56
Paperback - 320 pages (October 1997) |
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The True State of the Planet
by Ronald Bailey (Editor), Competitive Enterprise Institute
List Price: $15.00
Our Price: $12.00
Paperback - 472 pages (May 1995)
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Power Unseen: How Microbes Rule the World
by Bernard Dixon
Our Price: $16.95
Paperback Reprint edition (February 1996)
Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours.
Paperback 2nd edition Vol 1 (November 1995)
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Genetically Engineered Foods: Are They Safe? You Decide
by Laura Ticciati, Robin Ticciati
List Price: $5.95
Our Price: $4.76
Mass Market Paperback - 80 pages (December 1998)
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High-Tech Harvest: A Look at Genetically Engineered Foods (Impact Books: Science)
by Elizabeth L. Marshall
List Price: $24.00
Our Price: $16.80
Reading level: Young Adult
School & Library Binding (March 1999)
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Mad Cow U.S.A.: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?
by Sheldon Rampton (Contributor), John C. Stauber,
List Price: $24.95
Our Price: $17.47
Hardcover - 224 pages 1 Ed edition (September 1997)
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Virus Ground Zero: Stalking the Killer Viruses With the Center for Disease Control
by Ed Regis
List Price: $14.00
Our Price: $11.20
Paperback - 256 pages Reprint edition (July 1998) |
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The Human Cloning Debate
by Glenn McGee (Editor)
Our Price: $16.95
Paperback - 270 pages (September 1998)
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Global Warming: The Complete Briefing
by J. T. Houghton
List Price: $24.95
Our Price: $19.96
Paperback - 240 pages 2nd edition (December 1997)
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